


all there is to come

by fairmanor



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: David POV, David Rose Deserves Nice Things, Fluff, Husbands, Kissing, M/M, Patrick Brewer loves David Rose, Post-Canon, This is basically David loving his life for ~4000 words, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Winter in Schitt's Creek, contentedness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29009292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: When Patrick goes away for a training course and Stevie is in New York for the week, David realises that for the first time ever he’s all alone in Schitt’s Creek. What follows is a lot of thinking about the town and his place in it.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 55
Kudos: 227





	all there is to come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agoodpersonrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodpersonrose/gifts).



> Thank you to my lovely friend Carter for the fluffy domestic kitchen inspo at the end!!

“Patrick. Turn off your alarm. Back to bed.”

David knows that as a mound of thick blanket and only a few tufts of visible hair he mustn’t look very convincing to his husband, who’s currently wrestling his way into a pair of suit pants on the edge of the bed, but he reckons it’s worth a shot.

“I already did turn it off,” Patrick whispers back.

“Mm…no. Put it on snooze, come back to bed.”

In the dark, David watches Patrick’s shoulders slump as he huffs out a laugh.

“Don’t tempt me, it’s early enough as it is.”

David reaches a hand out of his duvet mountain and slaps aimlessly at Patrick’s back. “Bed.”

“Seven hour drive,” Patrick counters.

David grumbles in defeat.

“Fine. But don’t get a tea at the gas station, bring a flask. We need to use up the milk.”

Instead of answering, Patrick dives under the covers and crawls across to David’s side. He grabs David’s sides when he gets there and peppers his face with kisses.

“Don’t – go,” David manages between the assault.

“Oh, I don’t want to,” Patrick murmurs, leaning in for a proper kiss.

Once he realised that neither of them cared about morning breath (or any-time breath) anymore, the first kiss of the day quickly became David’s favourite. It’s always as warm as they are; sleep-soft and sure. It feels like love waking up.

Once Patrick pulls away and gets dressed, David is already drifting off again. Stevie calls David, but he knows it’s just to annoy him when she knows he’s in bed, so he doesn’t answer. The low buzz of his phone and the sound of Patrick’s car stuttering against the cold lull him back to sleep.

****

It doesn’t even occur to David until mid-morning that he’s the only one around.

Stevie’s been spending at least one week a month in New York recently as they work towards the opening of the third motel. She texts him pictures of bagels and Alexis, and David sends her videos of the birds fighting in his garden. This is the first time in his five months of marriage that one of Stevie’s trips and Patrick being away have crossed wires and David’s left at the epicentre of it, nestled between the divots they left as they sped past.

 _Actually no,_ David thinks, as he swings his legs at the desk chair in the Apothecary on that unusually quiet Wednesday morning. It’s not all that dramatic. He’s the one who’s at home, not them. Maybe a couple of years ago he would have felt like a piece of driftwood in the deepest bogs of the Canadian wilderness, but the roots he’s carved here run deeper than that now.

Though not so deep that he doesn’t spend the week thinking about it non-stop.

On the first day, he does little more than sit behind the counter with his chin resting on the heels of his hands, grazing on trail mix and some of Twyla’s raspberry crowns. When the twinge of sadness at Patrick being gone is still placated at the edges by the fact that he saw him not twelve hours ago, it’s easy to pretend he’s on a vendor run. Patrick texts him periodically throughout the day, always giving David something to smile about:

Patrick  
  
**Today** 10:11 AM  
MY HOTEL ROOM BED IS SO BIG  
Check my story on Instagram  
the fuck kind of bed is that, you could fit a small army in there  
I suppose that’s where you’ll be romping around with all your escorts tonight? 😝  
Ah yes, the best part of training courses. The many, many escorts.  
shut up and go learn how to communicate with non-local businesses you little nerd  
🖕 I will murder you  
you can murder this dick  
**Today** 4:27 PM  
Was anyone going to tell me that there were entire lectures on this course in fucking French or did I just have to sit through 90 minutes of absolute nonsense myself.  
LMAO, SEE! I told you it would come back to bite you one day!!!  
Now I’m stressed because I caught about one word in twenty and I missed it all  
j'espère qu'ils sont tous en français à partir de maintenant  
You shut your mouth.  
The Duolingo bird is gonna eat you up  
**Today** 7:02 PM  
What's on the menu tonight husband  
An artisanal selection of artfully carved breaded poultry served with a tomato, mustard and vinaigrette reduction  
…So you’re finishing off the turkey dinosaurs we bought that time Roland Jr came over   
Can you blame me for wanting to scour all memory of that traumatising day from our beautiful house?  
What are YOU having then, Gordon Ramsey??  
The buffet table has mini shrimps and lil tacos :D  
MiNi sHrImPs aNd LiL tAcOs  
Okay so we’re both eating like babies today. I’m sure we won’t die.  
enjoy your unethically farmed fish tails  
enjoy your sodium filled bird chunks shaped like extinct predators

As the days go by, their texts will become more perfunctory as they always do. Detailed blow-by-blows of their days wane into simple ‘love you’s and ‘miss you’s at the start and end of the day.

David tries his best to keep busy, but he can’t deny that the thought of being alone here is nagging at him still. It’s not the same feeling as when his family left. That was a soft sadness, only sitting as heavy on him as a weighted blanket might have, and he felt oddly safe inside it.

This doesn’t have the same, safety-netted feeling of that. When he would get down about his family in the early weeks, Stevie would barrel into his home with wine and boxes of Chinese takeout under her arms to take the edge off. Patrick would hold him tighter and whisper into his hair until he fell asleep. Now, he’s not sure what to occupy himself with. He’s not sure what to think.

The next morning, Twyla’s perched on the new bench outside the Apothecary, waiting for him to open like she is every morning. She always opens ten minutes after him so that they have a chance to chat and dig into the freshest batches of pastry before anyone else can.

“David!” she calls, waving before he gets out of his car.

He throws his head back and groans in thanks as she hands him his coffee.

“Oh my God, you’re an angel,” he says. “I can’t believe I forgot this morning.”

He’d been in such a rush to get out early this time that he completely forwent breakfast, which was probably a lifetime first. The last time Patrick had been out of town, David had accidentally slept in until one and by the time he felt awake and ready enough to open the store it was basically too late. Patrick still hasn’t noticed the inconsistency in their inventory and David prays he never does.

Twyla wraps her coat tighter and bristles against the cold. “I always like it when it’s like this,” she says. “Not the cold, but the quiet. In summer there are always too many people running on a morning. Did you know people _run_ on the mornings?”

David laughs. He thinks about Patrick stretching on the edge of the bed on the long, balmy days that are to come, thinks about him creeping around in his running gear and slipping in his earbuds just before sunrise. He thinks about himself, curling like a cat into the warm spaces Patrick left.

“Hard to imagine,” he says, though it’s not entirely true. Just because it’s not him doing the running, it doesn’t mean he’s not looking forward to it.

Stuck for something to say, he brings up the revelation that had stuck to him like bedstraw yesterday. “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been in town without my family or Patrick at the same time.” He didn’t say Stevie, but more often than not recently he’s started grouping her in with ‘my family’. Twyla will know what he means.

“Really?”

“Mm.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“A little lost, really,” he says, because it’s an easy thing to say. For the meantime, that’s how he thinks he feels. How he expects he’ll feel.

She looks at him incredulously. “That’s…odd to me, for some reason. Like, it sounds fake.”

David snorts. “Well, I’m not _lying.”_

“No, I know! It’s just…well, the person I associate most with this town out of all of you is you.”

That sets David off-kilter. It’s not an intense feeling, but it kind of reminds him of when Alexis had pushed him too hard on the merry-go-round they had in their garden as children and it had fallen off its rotation with a clunk. It’s bewilderment, dashed with a little bit of panic and responsibility.

Even when the conversation moves on and Twyla crosses over to open the cafe, David’s still thinking about it. About David, who lives in this town. David Rose of Schitt’s Creek. The information feels new, yet not new at all. There are people here perceiving him in ways he’d never even articulated to himself before.

He pulls his phone out to text Patrick, then remembers he has an early seminar this morning and pockets it before shoving the key into the Apothecary door.

It’s a standard day. Ronnie comes in, rubbing her hands together in uncharacteristic excitement at the news that they’ve started restocking that crumbly apricot cheese she likes. Ray gives David a tea, telling him all about his date with the lovely new gentleman he met at temple the other week. Roland tries to wrangle another babysitting gig out of him for a few days’ time, but the idea of dealing with that rabid devil child _alone_ chills David to the bone.

But then later, it’s Jocelyn who pops into the store and tells him that her and Roland’s wine tasting event has been changed to the week after, so David changes his babysitting answer to ‘pending’. He’s always found it hard to say no to Jocelyn for some reason, whether it’s mentoring sixteen-year-olds or letting her run amok in his store for a day.

Then, she says something that just caps off whatever the hell David has been feeling all day.

“You’re a lifesaver, David. I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

When she leaves, throwing a smile and a cheery wave over her shoulder, David blinks at the door and isn’t sure what to do with himself for a good few minutes.

She doesn’t know what she’d do without him. _Without him_. David reminds himself that it’s just one of those pleasantries that people like to string onto the ends of sentences instead of ‘thank you’, but still. Hearing something like that attached to him and the things he does is…jarring, and not entirely in a bad way.

He settles himself into the usual routine. There’s leftover mushroom and tomato pasta in the fridge, and half a pear and ginger cake that Marcy sent up the other day. David heats up some toffee sauce to go with it and stretches himself out on the couch, nestling down more smugly when he realises there’s no one he has to make room for.

He likes Patrick being there, most of the time. David will usually have his head in his husband’s lap, getting his tensed-up shoulders and soft stomach rubbed as he finishes dessert. But for now, he feels just as indulgent all on his own. He wriggles his toes in the black slipper-socks Marcy got him for Christmas and basks in the warmth of the fire, half-watching the David Attenborough rerun on TV.

He misses Patrick and Stevie, but he’s finding over the next few days that he’s coping with it much better than he thought he would. He has more to occupy him than he imagined, and not just because of work. People in town call him up and email about – about _stuff,_ and _things,_ all the little nothings that add up to a something by the end of the year. He stands, freezing cold, at the Rose Apothecary stall at the fair in the Town Hall, and makes the high school kids laugh when he buys out their entire stock of peanut chip cookies. He has a long bubble bath filled with lavender oil and washes his hair with his expensive argan conditioner.

On the fourth night, after getting himself off to the post-shower photo that Patrick sent him earlier, he Facetimes him.

“I bet I know why you’re calling,” Patrick says, chuckling in a low hum.

David gasps. “Is it a crime to call my husband for a completely innocent conversation? Anyway, I’m finished now. So thank you for that.”

“No problem.”

“How’s it going?”

Patrick groans. “Boring. I’m not even sure why I signed up, to be honest. Some of the stuff on here is about making partnerships in Europe and stuff that we’ll never even need to think about.”

“You mean you’re not thinking about opening an exclusive L’Apothicaire Rose branch in the heart of Provence?”

“Don’t start with the French again,” Patrick warns.

“Ha, get on my level.”

There’s a moment of comfortable silence. David pulls his soft bathrobe tighter and flops his head onto the pillow.

“I miss you,” he says.

“Mm, I miss you too. Two days to go.”

“Ugh, too long!”

“Do you think you can cope that long without running off with the milkman?”

“Ew, how many times? He’s a – a dirty old man, I don’t want any of that.”

“Say that to your face watching his thighs as he walks away,” Patrick retorts.

David laughs, then lets out a yawn.

“Right, I’ll let you go,” he says. “I’m sure you have some riveting bridges to build with the future manager of Boticario Rosa in the morning.”

They say their goodnights and David pulls himself into the freshly washed duvet, and sleeps better than he has done all week.

***

As much as David loves his husband – and he really, really does – he unfortunately belongs to the more evil breed of human beings: the let-it-soakers. It had taken a month of cohabitation for David to realise that there needed to be a permanent divide in the chores they did after Patrick left a casserole dish perched on the edge of the sink full of cold, murky water for two days and didn’t see a problem with it. They have a dishwasher, but more often than not David finds that he actually quite enjoys the monotony of being stood over the sink, cleaning everything until it’s spotless and knowing he was the one who did it.

That’s how he spends the day that the store is closed: tending to the house. He has Patrick’s chores to do as well as his own, so he puts on some music and loses himself to the twists and curves of the house that is becoming beautifully familiar to him now; a shell, a heartbeat, telling him what it needs.

Once, in New York, his gallery intern-turned-friend Krista had sat and watched, amused, as he cleaned his entire apartment the day after Sebastien left for good. Eventually, the adrenaline wore off and he was stood over the sink, washing up slowly just as he has been today.

_“You know, it’s kind of mesmerising watching you do stuff,” she said. “You take care of things very…methodically.”_

_David frowned at her, looking over the soapy mug in his gloved hands. “What do you mean?”_

_“I don’t know, you just treat everything like it’s worth something. If I were you, I’d be smashing that random mug on the floor.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because…I’d be angry?”_

_“At the mug?”_

_“No, obviously.”_

_“Then why smash the mug?”_

That had been the end of the conversation, and David had never really given it much thought until now. He looks at the little sculpture on the mantlepiece that he’s currently dusting in long, slow strokes. When he puts it back, he feels a little pang of belonging as he positions it just how he likes, then stands back. A place for everything, everything in its place.

Because he cares about this place, and he cares that he’s in it. Even at his angriest, even in the loneliest, bitterest moments of his first few months here, he tried his absolute hardest not to take it out on Schitt’s Creek itself. They were the cards he’d been dealt, and he didn’t want to look at them unless he was going to play them properly.

He’s so glad he was patient.

When he’s done, his phone pings with a text.

Patrick  
**Today** 2:30 PM  
Home tomorrow. Love you so much.❤️

David smiles down at his phone. He’s surprised to find he’s feeling a little excited that he still has time left on his own, his attitude miles from what he thought it would be. Before he can think twice, he reaches for his keys and coat and heads out of the door.

Back when the motel was nothing more than a vomit-soaked dump and he thought that Schitt’s Creek was just a minor bump in the road, something he could play off to the press as a carefully strategized step in his inspirational wellness journey, he thought this town was so ugly. There are parts of it that are limp, he admits, but the middle of nowhere can never be ugly for long. Not when there are meadows and copses of trees on the outskirts of town, weaving between every yard in Elmdale County, that are so pure and beautiful that David has started making mini road trips around just to park up and draw them.

It’s usually a summer activity of his to draw when the gardens are in bloom or Patrick is bathed in golden evening light, laughing loud and bright with a chilled beer in his hand. But with nothing else to do, he starts picking up on the snatches of winter beauty that have bedded themselves into the little cracks that had threatened to fill up with a well-known loneliness.

Even so, he keeps a spare sketchpad and pencil set in the glove compartment of his car all year round for long road trips. He parks at the edge of town by the park, listening to the faint grunts and yells of the high school football team dragging themselves through a wet winter practice, and opens his book.

He was thinking about drawing the park itself, but he looks down and notices the smallest patch of snowdrops peeking their cupped heads out of a patch of dirty snow by the fence. They’re fighting against the cold, a promise of good days and bad days and summer and spring. He shades the way the tips of their petals brush against the frozen ground, the hint of green stem. When Patrick’s home, he’ll sit with him in bed as he always does when he’s drawn something new and let him flip through the sketchbook. Every time he’s finished looking at a piece of art, he always presses a kiss to David’s head and murmurs praise into his hair while David squirms happily beneath it.

When Patrick returns the next day, David is pinned down by a soft throw on the couch drinking hot chocolate. When he hears the beep of Patrick’s car keys, he sighs and gets himself up because he’s used to how Patrick likes to greet him after time apart, whether David’s ready for it or not.

“David?”

“In here,” David calls from the living room, hanging off the doorframe expectantly. His stomach is fluttering already.

Ever since Patrick realised David could support his weight, he’s made it a habit to run at him and launch himself up, wrap his legs around David’s waist and kiss him senseless. Tonight is no exception; he almost bowls David over with the force of it, and they’re a giggling mess on the couch by the time Patrick’s got his fill.

“What did you get up to? Anything life-changing happen while I was away?” Patrick says.

“No,” David replies, and tells him anyway. They weren’t life-changing, all these things he’s noticed in the past seven days. Just him and the place he belongs. Nothing new, but nothing old, either.

It’s not a _love story_ , David and this town he’s in. Not quite. In the same way he wouldn’t describe his relationship with the people who raised him a love story, he can’t say the same about this place.

But there is love in it. There’s love perched and waiting just outside of it, creeping through the cracks in a gentle stream. Like Twyla sitting on the bench to wait for him on a morning. Like the first snowdrops coming out to bloom. Love has a way of catching him off guard in Schitt’s Creek, tricking him into believing in it.

Tomorrow, they’ll go into work. Ronnie will come in and buy her cheese, her enthusiasm probably marred by the sight of Patrick. David will have to fill Patrick in on the way Jocelyn _basically forced_ him to babysit Roland Jr, and Patrick will bite his nails for the rest of the afternoon as he thinks about toddler-proofing the table corners. They’ll make spiced pumpkin soup for dinner and David will hug Patrick from behind as he stirs the pot, swaying gently in the soft kitchen lights to the music drifting from the speaker. And when David looks out the window just before it gets too dark, he’ll think about how many things there are that make him happy. About the things he’s contributing to, about the things that contribute to him, David Rose of Schitt’s Creek.

This town is not a love story. Not even a story, really. It’s peaceful little nothings, that turn into somethings, that make up the best life David’s ever had.

There’s too much love to tell a story about.

**Author's Note:**

> Becca, I hope you like this fluff. ❤️


End file.
